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National Local Roads Congress 2002

Report from the Committee

Councillor John Wearne AM
Chair, ALGA Local Roads Committee

Contents

The way forward

In a nutshell, the congress resolved to prove the case for long term on-going adequate funding for local roads.

This task would complement and provide input to future road funding lobbying.

Our five priorities

The congress noted the key role of asset management in developing the case for on-going funding and identified the following five priorities:

  1. Obtain standardised solid data on the benefits and cost of local road expenditure by Councils;
  2. Demonstrate the effective use of investment in local roads infrastructure;
  3. A detailed analysis of future transport infrastructure requirements and how it can be funded, on a national basis;
  4. Co-operation between Local Government, State and industry bodies at the Regional level;
  5. Demonstrate performance by benchmarking against best practice.

We made five recommendations

The five recommendations were:

What has happened since then?

One of the significant developments has been the incorporation of the Committee under the ALGA banner. This gives much more solid status than previously existed under our congress mandate. It reflects a commitment from your State Associations to the priorities identified at Mildura.

The committee will now advise the ALGA on local roads and as a sub-committee we will be in the best position to engage with the various State Associations. This enhances our capacity to run a national roads and transport agenda. Whilst road funding is our focus at the present time, there will be other issues where the ALGA Executive will seek advice. One such example is Performance Based Standards but I will leave that to another time.

Whilst we have been coming to grips with the national agenda, there has been a number of significant initiatives at the state level. This came through strongly in the session prior to afternoon tea, where 5 State Associations reported on their work.

The Commonwealth has also come out in support of ALGA to review projects funded from the Roads to Recovery program and to a long term approach to asset management in local government.

The Commonwealth Commitment

There a two aspects to asset management

But what do we mean by asset management. I believe there are two quite distinct streams. One is the decision making processes by the Council, while the other is the advice that our engineers provide based on assessments of life cycle costing, road condition and remaining life and all those technical considerations that most Councilors find difficult to come to grips with.

These two activity streams need to come together. We need good advice from the engineers and we need Councilors who understand the long term implications of their decisions. And we need national consistency in our approach to asset management as part of our case for continued Commonwealth funding. You will notice that I have used the word national consistency, I am not suggesting that we all have the same asset management system as this must remain the prerogative of individual councils to adopt systems that are relevant to their local conditions.

The first stream is being pursued vigorously in a number of states now and I find this extremely encouraging. The second is consistent with our resolution at Mildura to build a national dataset on the benefits and costs of expenditure by councils.

The panel session that will follow my address will develop this theme further.

Outcomes of the Commonwealth funded project

The Commonwealth support a regional approach, there is no doubt about that. Their proposed AusLink funding arrangements reflect how they would like to see us make our case. AusLink has a large Regional Australia component which should become a focus for us as well. This is why we need to promote regional prioritisation and identify key local roads of regional significance.

The Commonwealth is supportive of templates and guidelines being developed and made available to all councils across Australia. This will not be difficult as there is so much going on at the State level.

The project will also facilitate clusters of councils developing case studies which will also be made readily available to all councils. Those councils who participate in the review of the R2R projects will be asked whether they want to be part of the asset management component as well.

I expect that this will bring a national perspective to asset management and complement the work being done at the state and local levels.

Summary

A lot has happened since Mildura in March last year characterised by a significant effort by State Associations on asset management. Most of the effort has been in a collegiate arrangement with the State Government. This is particularly important.

The Commonwealth has come on board in a big way both in terms of their desire to work with us on a review of projects funded from the Roads to Recovery program and in their support for a national approach to asset management.

The committee has been incorporated into the ALGA structure which will ensure that the ALGA continues to receive advice consistent with the views of this congress.

The panel session that follows will pursue the issues relating to a national approach to asset management.

And we are on track to produce a report on projects funded from the Roads to Recovery program by the end of this year.

Recommendations - 1

Let me move to my committee's recommendations, which will be discussed more fully in the Plenary session tomorrow afternoon.

There are four recommendations.

The first two are on the screen and represent a recommitment from Mildura. But this time, we have our State Associations on board who will drive the agenda at the State level.

The role at the national level is to ensure that there is consistency in the fundamentals so that we can leverage off the more detailed State work in our dealings with the Commonwealth.

Recommendations - 2

The second two recommendations are on the screen and recognise the importance of a regional focus when dealing with the Commonwealth and with working through the AusLink issues as they emerge.

It is imperative that each Council have a strategy to implement an asset management strategy. This clearly needs to be broader than just roads. Once we have achieved this, it might be time to persuade the Commonwealth that they should be providing financial assistance to Councils for all local infrastructure and not just roads. But this is an issue for the future and not today.

The issue for today is for Councils to move to a regional focus in identifying road infrastructure to make the strongest case for Commonwealth funding.

Finally

Finally, let me welcome the participants in the asset management panel session which will now follow. You will recognise that they are the same people who presented their State Association reports before afternoon tea. I have a few questions that I want to put firstly to them and then I'll open it up to the floor. This will help us break some of the ground before we discuss the Where to From Here tomorrow afternoon.

My first question is: _________________________________

The second is: ____________________________________